s.rae meisinger – author and freelance writer

Category Archives: Camp NaNoWriMo

Last month, I tentatively accepted the “challenge” of Camp NaNoWriMo. For those of you unfamiliar, it is simply a summer-time version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which takes place each November, the “goal” being to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

I accepted the challenge, and I failed.

But how much can one fail at something self-paced?

Ultimately, I got a couple thousand words written on one project, nearly one thousand on another, refined a second draft of the first 1/4 of a WIP novel, accepted a handful of very helpful beta readers, redefined the “genre” of one project, joined several (very) beneficial writing groups, created a digital book cover, and unveiled a few plot twists even I didn’t know were coming.

This is what I love about the NaNoWriMo institution. It allows you to set a goal. It prompts you to keep going when the going gets tough. It creates atmosphere for you to brainstorm with other users and even to utilize some of the great ideas that aren’t being used (with full consent of the original creator). It gives you insight from other authors– some very successful, others just seeing the first results of their accomplishments.

I prefer the November writing to the summer writing. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the holidays, maybe it’s tradition– I really don’t know.

But Camp helped me figure a lot out, it coaxed me into working on aspects I hadn’t considered.

So maybe I failed at the original goal I’d set for myself (25k words on a new project), but it sure rocked.

Really looking forward to November. No one needs an excuse to write, but sometimes it’s really the best kick in the pants possible.

Kudos to all of you who participated, those of you who reached your goals, and those of you who have been inspired.

I will soon be hunting for a couple beta readers for my WIP novels. One is an atypical YA fantasy story, the other is more mature and futuristic, bordering on scifi (excerpts are posted here within my blog).

I will be looking mostly for analytical thinkers who enjoy the genres and who won’t be wary of dishing out criticism on flow, characters, plot, grammar, style, etc.

You will also be prompting me to continue to write when “I don’t wanna!” and serving as someone for me to bounce ideas off of. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please let me know.

Serious inquiries only, if you don’t mind! There will be plenty of opportunities in the near future for EVERYONE to read what I’ve done, but I’m calling for a little more work on your part this time around.

If this appeals to you, comment here or drop me a line via other contact avenues! Thank you!

The words gorged themselves on the pause’s antipathy, growing larger and more fearsome by the moment. Before he could even gasp, Adam had lost his breath under the weight of the phrase. A swelling heat licked his cheeks crestfallen-red. Smiling diffidently, he rolled his shoulders as though he could cast the implication away like a stubborn shiver. He swallowed past his bloated tongue.

“I guess you just don’t get it,” he snickered to cover the breathless hitch in his voice. “I already know this is ‘real’ life. It’s been real for me for a long time.”

Before he had even finished the thought, Penny threw his hand from her own and stood up, turning her back on him. From paces away, Adam could hear her still exhaling her exasperation. He rolled his eyes and leaned back in the chair, causing the wicker to creak. It was impossible to keep from falling into the same mechanical routine with this Penelope as he would have with his own so many years ago. They may as well have been fighting about too many late nights, or her favorite dress ruined by careless paint spatters.

“We’ve had this conversation before, Adam,” she sighed at the wall.

That was news to him. He ran his hand down the length of his beard, stopping just before the end to tug the skin of his chin to a small, fleshy peak before releasing it to snap back into place. “Oh, really? When?”

Indignation and doubt painted those words with sarcasm and that automated response at once made him feel disconcerted. Eerie familiarity broke in cold sweat across his forehead. She wasn’t his person. Not really. She looked and sounded and even smelled the same, but she wasn’t his Penelope. Interacting with this version was never supposed to have happened. It was as unnatural as talking to a clone created postmortem and yet it felt as ordinary as kissing the woman he loved good-bye as she left for work each morning. Once upon a time…

Adam stood at the precipice of truth and looked deeply into it. He remembered what “crazy” felt like, but the room around him, the thick, lifeless clay walls, the stagnant, dusty smell, what was happening just beyond the protected neighborhood, the circumstances that led him to not-Penelope, the friends he’d made, the people still facing persecution, the cause he fought for– none of it was a mere product of a broken mind.

Penny wheeled around, her temper pinching her eyebrows together in deep wrinkles. Her fists started as white bludgeons, then opened to pale and deadly talons sinking into her waist where they perched, poised for attack.

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was maybe six months ago?” She squeezed her hips, digging fingernails into the fabric of her dress. At every pause and questioning inflection, she shrugged and shook her head exaggeratedly. “Do you remember that, hmm? Just before we admitted you. Wouldn’t that make sense?”

Adam licked his bottom lip, avoiding looking directly into her eyes. His were searching the floor while he picked through the files of his own mind, thumbing through for proof of his sanity. Six months prior, he guessed he had been on the plane where he buckled under drug addiction at age seventeen, just before his initial leap into this strange future. Explaining that to her would amount to nothing, but it was enough to ground him once again.

Tongue still pressed wetly to the pink corner of his lip, Adam looked up at Penelope, exposing the lower whites of his eyes, wringing his hands together to squeeze relief from the reflection. His head swiveled slowly to sling the word “No” around the entire room, to coat her in the elongated vowel. The hesitation he felt began to lift, resolve taking its place. With a modest cluck of laughter he rose from the chair, a groan of friction vibrating through the small, dark space as the chair’s feet slid noisily across the smooth floor. The impatience on Penny’s face diminished into suspicion as Adam took long strides to meet her.

“It doesn’t make any sense. If I could count every day on the time-line of my consciousness, as I am now, my relationship with Penelope would have ended five years ago.” The corners of his lips turned up into a cordial smile. “Give or take some. Time isn’t as cohesive as it once was for me.”

Penny frowned. Only an inch or two in front of her, he watched her pupils dilate and constrict as she digested the notion, trying to dissect what he said. While she calculated, he imagined he could hear a machine-like whir governing the eyes’ movement– anything to make her seem less real, less intimate than he perceived her.

Then she broke. The butts of her palms slammed into his chest, thrusting him backward. One step was due to her force, the other for the sake of distance. He threw his hands up in surrender.

“Five years ago? You mean when we started our family? You’re a bastard. A sick, Godless bastard!” By “Godless,” her tone had become shrill and loud and Adam’s small smile had spread to a reactive grin. Penny’s long white neck pulsed, one vein bulging blue while red heat spread from her exposed collar bones to her cheeks. Her lips quivered and her talons fell limp at her sides, no more than a fragile girl’s fingers. Like a popped balloon, she had one vicious outburst and then deflated into her overwhelmed emotions.

Adam shrugged, allowing his defensive palms to drop as well. “That’s what they keep telling me.” He approached her again, understanding glazing him in empathy. Collecting her hands in his, he watched disheartened tears well and spill.

“Why do you hate me?” She muttered, blinking hard and sending more rivulets down her face. “Why do you hate the life we built, our kids?” Penny’s voice was a croaky whisper, but the guileless tone shocked his heart.

“Now, hey, I’m sorry this is happening to you. But I don’t hate you. Hell, I don’t even know you.”

She sobbed hard, slumping forward as though he’d dealt a deliberate blow.

“Listen, damn it!” Adam squeezed Penny’s fingers, the twinge of pain sending her gaze wide-eyed back to his. She sniffled. “I am not who you think I am, I may not even be what you think I am. You have children, but they’re not mine, you have memories, but they’re not with me. You have a life, but I’ve never been a part of it until now.”

She shook her head in denial before he had finished speaking. Adam released his hold on her, but did not retreat. “I left my Penny years ago. We lived together for a few months, but we fought all the time. One time because she didn’t want the baby we were going to have together. That was the last time. Did you fight with your Adam?”

Penelope’s eyebrows slanted, her mouth opened and closed a few times as though trying to dislodge the right words. Finally, she rasped, “No… Not really. Not until–“

“He started going a little nuts?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. Adam nodded with her.

“I get that it doesn’t make any sense, but you gotta help me out. I need to get back to my friends and I need no one who ever interacted with your Adam to know I was here. Can I leave and trust you with this secret?”

Another nod.

“Good.” Adam smiled, this time genuinely and without the pretense of simple habit or self-preservation. All at once, he wanted nothing more than to kiss her, but there was no time for that kind of confusion. She would be all right. Everyone was always all right.

In the next moment, he was already across the room, slinging his bag over his shoulder. The soles of his shoes slapped against the concrete floor with renewed vigor and the pack’s weight felt like the embrace of an old friend. He reached the brass handle of the basement door and turned it halfway.

“Adam?” Penelope’s voice echoed. He turned, releasing the knob with a metallic click. “I’m sorry that I– that she–“

Adam held his hand up to gesture a halt. “Those memories are somewhere else in time, now. We only have this very instant. Let’s do something good with it.” With a smirk, his backpack, and no idea how to become reunited with Molly and Anna Lisa, he left Penelope Clark with the kind of resolved conclusion he’d craved over an infinite span of space and time.

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the Reform King!
Peace for none and mercy lost,
you’re not a person, you’re just a cost.”

They’ve put the pennies on our eyes to keep us blind, to keep us numb.
They’ve put the pennies on our eyes to take them back once we succumb
to death or our fellows’ devil tongues, when it suits their wallets best,
when we have nowhere else to run.

And the cool of the copper is better than the scrape of the wool,
except one is meant to send us to the grave, the other to use us as fuel
to make an example of ignorance to the ignorant masses,
to use as a crutch,
to save their asses.

I proclaim to you now, we don’t need that wealth.

We need our minds, our bodies, our souls, and their respective health

We need what freedom used to be, or at least should have been
We need what freedom meant to me, when thinking wasn’t sin
We need to stand together, hand-in-hand, skin-on-skin
We need to make ourselves better
with every mind corrupted,
every child abducted,
every wall within
and without our haunted cities, derelict and forsaken.

Because our world can’t stand divided, it’s already begun to fall
“streets paved with gold” doesn’t have the same ring
when it comes down to “all for one and none for all”
no matter how loud and proud those dulcet angels sing

I don’t know about you, but for me camp has already been ridiculously helpful.

Notoriously, I’m a pantser. Meaning (for those of you who don’t participate in the NaNoWriMo fun) I fly by the seat of my pants when I write. I kind of just compile character composites I enjoy, have one main plot point, and write it out by allowing my characters to tell the story for me.

I’ve realized in this first week that my usual method won’t work for this one.

My initial goals in starting were to complete 25k words (probably not gonna happen), create an actual outline (probably gonna happen), and to come up with a more suitable working title than “Untitled Religious Apocalypse” (definitely already did happen).

With one goal down, another developing each day, and the other just waiting to happen, I’m feeling rather successful though my word count is still at the big goose egg.

“Untitled R.A” has become “God’s Out Sick.”

3k words I’d written when this novel was nothing more than a concept will not have to be discarded as I’d originally thought.

Two more characters have developed integral roles.

My plot has gone from one centered around my own personal beliefs and has exploded into one with multiple facets and more substance than I even really know what to do with.

And I’ve done more research on multiverse theory than I ever thought I’d do in my life.

Slowly but surely, I’ve been working on writing down major plot points. I will not physically begin writing again until these plot points successfully lead me from opening page to conclusion. This has been the most challenging thing for me.

However, as an author, as a NaNoWriMo “winner” in years past, as a reader, I know that I need this step before I can begin. I can reach word count goals by the seat of my pants, but I can’t construct a world, a Universe, where multiple characters are all tied to the fates of each other and to each ripple in the story.

So far, with each plot point I’ve written, I’ve discovered a new connection, a new twist, a new setting, a new fuse to light, more characters, more problems, and more answers.

Outlining isn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever done for a NaNo Project, but it’s already been the most productive.

What struggles are other Campers coming upon? What little moments or changes in routine have already surprised you? How’s the first week going, over all?